The Colorado Free Application Days campaign is an initiative designed to inspire more Coloradans to continue their education. From Tuesday, Oct. 7 through Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025, all 32 public colleges and universities in Colorado and several private institutions will waive their application fees, making it free for anyone to submit an application. By waiving application fees—a common barrier to higher education—Colorado Free Application Days aims to improve access to further education and training, which is becoming increasingly critical in the state’s rapidly changing economy.

For more information, visit the following Colorado Department of Higher Education (CDHE) for more details, including the list of participating colleges and universities, here and here.

In 2024, there were over 65,000 applications received during the Colorado Free Application Days including almost 12,000 at CU-Boulder and over 4,300 at the University of Denver.

The CDHE also provides a lot of educational materials on its My Colorado Journey site. It includes resources for high school course selection, career exploration, college research , financial aid, and test preparation.

Best of luck to your student as they begin their senior year of high school and please reach out to the team at Great College Advice if we can help with their Colorado (and beyond) applications!

The post Colorado Free Application Days October 7 – 9th first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

If you’re interested, I also explained need-based financial aid in this post.

If you’d prefer to read my comments, you’ll find them below.

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I’m here right now on the campus of Dickinson College, which is in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and I want to talk a little bit about financial aid. But I want to set the stage by saying Dickinson College is just a gorgeous place. I’m here just kind of outside the library in a little courtyard, the azaleas are in bloom, and students are packed in the library right now studying for finals.

Architecturally speaking, this campus is one of those harmonious campuses, all in gray brick. It’s just absolutely stunning. The landscaping is beautiful. Every facility I’ve gone into so far has been stupendous, superb.

But let’s talk about financial aid. And we’ll talk about merit aid because merit aid is the money you get because you’re a good student. And, at Dickinson, in order to get merit aid you need to be a very good student. Dickinson reserves only a very small portion of its financial aid budget for merit and awarded at the very top.

So, to give you some examples, I picked up this fact sheet outside the admissions office. I’m here on a Saturday; it’s not the best day to come, but it’s what I could do. So, I picked up this fact sheet and for financial aid, first of all, the tuition for 2024-2025 is just over $68,000, just for the tuition alone. About 2/3 of students receive some form of financial aid so 1/3 are paying $68,000, okay?

So, just so you put that in perspective. It also says that they do offer academic scholarships to almost 30% of the student body. Okay, so, 2/3% are paying full price and almost 30% are getting some sort of academic scholarship for their high school labor.

The other thing is that the middle 50% of scores – let’s just take the ACT score because it’s a little easier, sometimes, to remember. Out of 36, the mid 50% is between 30 and 33 in terms of their admitted students who submitted test scores. So, 25% of students who are admitted that submitted an ACT score have a 33 or above.

Now remember, I said almost 30% of students actually get merit-based financial aid. So, in other words – and these are rough numbers – in order to get a merit-based scholarship at Dickinson, you likely need to be in the 32-33 and above ACT range (or equivalent SAT) or have an impressive GPA or other talents.

I mean, that’s not based on your ability to pay, but if you are trying to reduce the price of college by maximizing other people’s money – and in this case, the college’s money – to get scholarships from the college, you need to roughly be in the top 25%.

Now, in several of the other liberal arts colleges that I’ve been visiting on this tour. If you’re in the top 50%, you’re likely to get some sort of merit-based financial aid, but not at Dickinson. You need to be closer to the top of the applicant pool to pull down merit-based aid.

So, it really helps to know who’s getting the money and to do the research and to look at the numbers as you apply. Because if you’re one of those students whose family believes and wants some sort of merit-based aid in order to pay for college, reduce the price. you’re not going to get it at Dickinson unless you are at the very top of their applicant pool – the top 25%.

Again, other colleges that’s not the case. The top 50% of the pool receives some sort of merit-based discount, but Dickinson, well, there’s a reason why there are such wonderful facilities here. So, it’s a great school, it’s beautiful.

I would recommend it. I think academically, it’s quite good, but if you’re looking for a bargain, it’s only going to be a bargain if you’re in the top 25%.

Great College Advice

Editor’s Note: This post has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.   

The post Merit-Based Financial Aid Explained first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

Part of a series on Bates College.
Part 3 … Part 5

TRANSCRIPT:

Another thing that sets Bates apart from many of its competitor schools. If you will, is that the outdoors is an integral part of this campus. It is located in Maine, which is a beautiful state, and the outdoors is so much a part of what Mainers are really about. So you have the mountains and skiing that’s about an hour away, it’s really great, fantastic skiing. And then you have one of the most spectacular natural sea coasts in North America. So you’ve got plenty of outdoor opportunities.

Now keep in mind, of course, this is Maine, so there will be snow on the ground. It’s green and beautiful today in the summer. But there will be lots of snow on the ground so it’s winter sports. And Bates also has Division I skiing, including Nordic skiing so winter sports are really, really popular here.

So outdoor activities, if you’re interested in getting outside, going camping, going hiking, being part of the beautiful outdoors of America, Maine and Bates: you need to think about those.

Mark Montgomery
Expert Educational Consultant

The post Educational Consultant on Bates 4 of 5: An Outdoorsman’s College first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

TRANSCRIPT:

One of the other things that I found were interesting about Bates is the history matters. History matters with a lot of these colleges and Bates is very different from most of the other New England colleges in that it was set up by Free Will Baptists. And the Free Will Baptists were committed to ensuring that Bates was a campus that would be welcoming, not only to the local community and to America’s elite.

But also to women, so it was the first college in New England to accept women and also other minorities, including blacks. This was set up before the end of the Civil War, and from the very beginning they accepted freed slaves into the campus community.

So why does that matter? Well, it’s part of the ethos. It’s part of the way that Bates thinks about itself and presents itself and projects itself into the world, that this is a progressive learning community. It’s an intentional community that has always been diverse. That has always been accepting of people of every stripe, including every religious background, every socioeconomic class, every ethnic background.

So that is just one of the core principles at this college that does set apart a little bit. Everybody’s going to talk about how they’re into being welcoming and tolerant and accepting. And of course that’s part of the American reality today. But Bates has walked the walk from the beginning of its history whereas some of the Ivy League schools, well, all of the Ivy League schools. And many other elite small colleges in New England just didn’t begin that way. So that’s an important part of Bates’ history to keep in mind.

Mark Montgomery
Expert Educational Consultant

The post Educational Consultant on Bates 3 of 5: A Welcoming Community first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

Here’s the question submitted by a young man named Robert:

Hello!
I need you to do me a favor and give this to me straight without trying to make me feel good. I have a 2.0 GPA andthe 4th Quarter of my Junior year is about to start. I’ve taken my SAT once so far and got a 1600, I plan on taking it again. I really do want to go to college more than most people who have better grades than me do. Given my grades can I get into college? What acceptance rate should I stick near? Do you have any tips for me to help my college appeal? Please don’t try to soften it up for me I need to hear it honest and straight. 
Thanks, Robert

And here is my brief response. It hits him hard, but he wanted it “honest and straight.”
Very briefly, I can tell you that you will be able to get into college. There is always a college somewhere that will take your money, even if you have a terrible GPA.  

 However, you need to consider two things.

What do you think? Is this the advice you would give him? If not, how would you say it differently?

Mark Montgomery
Honest and Straight Educational Consultant

The post Bad Grades Can Still Get You Into College–At a Price first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

Thanks to the miracle of social media, I read an article today that goes a long way to explain–from a teacher’s perspective–how silly it is that we make a huge deal of the difference between a B+ (measured at 89% in some grading systems) and an A- (measured at a 90%). Can this single percentage point–which marks the difference between admission and rejection and top universities, between winning scads of scholarship dollars and taking on loads of debt–really mean so much when it comes to a the amount a student has LEARNED?

The article entitled “It’s Time to Stop Averaging Grades,” is written by Rick Wormeli and published on the Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE) website, makes these primary points.

1. School grading systems based on percentages are arithmetically handy, but they do not measure knowledge or skills.

2. Teachers’ assignments and internal grading systems may not be consistent within the school.

3.  Differences of tenths or even hundredths of a point can mean the world of difference to students seeking admissions–and scholarships.

4.  Teachers and schools are being dishonest if they stand on arithmetic, rather than educational, principles.

I highly recommend the article to all educators…and to parents who anticipate an argument with a teacher over a few hundredths of a point on  a test.

Grades and GPA ≠ Learning

The fact is that too many students (and their parents) obsess about the GPA and the grades students are receiving. But they pay too little attention to what students are actually learning. They pay too little attention to whether the student is actually academically prepared for college. It’s important to separate the mathematical expression of academic performance (i.e, your GPA) from the learning that is taking place in the classroom.

Mark Montgomery
Independent Educational Consultant

The post Grades and GPA Don’t Necessarily Reflect Knowledge first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

• 4.0 GPA and 33 ACT or 1440 SAT: $20,000 ($5,000/year)
• 4.0 GPA and 31 ACT or 1350 SAT: $14,000 ($3,500/year)
• 3.9 GPA and 28 ACT or 1240 SAT: $10,000 ($2,500/year)
• 3.8 GPA and 30 ACT or 1310 SAT: $10,000 ($2,500/year)

Students who applied for Fall 2013 and who meet the above criteria will automatically be considered for a scholarship.  CU estimates that 20-25 percent of the Colorado residents in next year’s freshman class will receive a scholarship through the Esteemed Scholars Program.
For more information about the program, visit CU’s website.

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The post How Much Merit Aid Will Your College Give You? first appeared on College Admission Counseling.